Quote from: hybris on 2009-09-19 09:39:53

there's something special about owning items of quality and craftmanship. It lets you share a little bit of the pride of the original watchmaker (or loudspeaker builder). It has nothing to do with keeping time, and only partly about high end sound.

I agree, but to me $100 is an expensive watch!

Quote from: andy_c on 2009-09-18 21:57:28

LOL!  This whole situation reminds me of an old article that's one of the funniest pieces of writing about audio I've ever read.  It's by Peter Aczel, called "The 91st Audio Engineering Society Convention; or, The Invasion of the Credibility Snatchers".

Excellent! I loved his word "antiverificationists."

Quote from: analog scott on 2009-09-18 05:19:36

Quote from: Canar on 2009-09-16 18:21:29

I don't care how you cut it, spending $2000 on cables is always problem behaviour. There are a lot of untreated individuals out there...

Edit: based on the negative-consequences criterion above, there are two: inappropriate use of resources, and hallucination of things that are not there.

I'm a bit confused here.

Yeah, right.

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Are you saying that 2,000 dollar cables don't exist and audiophiles are just imagining them? What is the "treatment" for buying 2,000 dollar cables? (that may or may not exist???). Where exactly is the "rule book" on appropriate and inapporpraite use of any individual's personal reseources?

The 'treatment' for a belief in an unlikely audible difference is a good bias-controlled listening test.  But that's bitter medicine to the sort of audiophile who actually buys $2000 cables.

The introduction of the luxury goods analogy tends to suggest that some rich audiophiles are basically exhibiting conspicuous consumption habits and it's not *really* about the music at all.

None of the above, analog scott.

If you have something constructive to contribute to this community, I suggest you do so. I have seen nothing but poor trolling from you since you've started posting here, and I'm really starting to tire of it, as are the other moderators.

$2,000 cables are just stupid. They will not improve sound beyond the hallucinatory effects of bias.

There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.

If you can't understand the constructive point that bias effects are not something unique to those who find pleasure in 2,000 dollar cables and that one hobbyist calling another hobbyist stupid for how they enjoy their hobby is ironically stupid...

Bias is not a fact of life. You can train yourself to be resilient to it.

Bias is not a fact of life. You can train yourself to be resilient to it.

Quote from: analog scott on 2009-09-20 12:54:03

There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.

But the test has determined whether or not there is a real difference, or if the difference is bias! If the only difference is bias, then the test has proved that there actually is no difference. If a person continues to feel that there is a difference, then they are literally just deluding themselves.

I hope somebody with a satirical bent will be there to document this soon-to-be-historic occasion .

How do you prove that there is no audible advantage in crazy audiophile gadgets? How do you disprove God?

Quote from: andy_c on 2009-09-20 04:55:31

I hope somebody with a satirical bent will be there to document this soon-to-be-historic occasion .

I plan to bring an HD camcorder, and a friend who's a pro videographer will run it. I was told not to let the union goons see us though. I'll also have a Zoom H2 portable recorder on the dais with me, which I'll use for the audio track. But I was told not to put it up publicly on YouTube etc since the AES sells audio recordings of these events. At the minimum, you're all welcome to visit me a week after the show for drinks and laughs while we watch.

It''s actually been done, at least informally. I recall a report from one of the audio gear conventions where one of the vendors made it look like he was running fat pricey cabling (i think it was power cord) , when in fact he was just running a standard hardware store cord. And audiophiles swooned over the 'difference'.

The real issue here is family relationships and family budget priorities

when obsessions become a problem, it is a symptom of unhappiness in work / relationship / lifestyle

There are many mental disorders that people can still function well with, and some very sane people I know enjoy inducing hallucinations in themselves from time to time.

Bias is not a fact of life.

Quote from: analog scott on 2009-09-20 12:54:03

There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.

But the test has determined whether or not there is a real difference, or if the difference is bias! If the only difference is bias, then the test has proved that there actually is no difference. If a person continues to feel that there is a difference, then they are literally just deluding themselves.

Bias is not a fact of life. You can train yourself to be resilient to it. I haven't claimed I heard a difference when none existed in years, basically since I discovered the methodologies described by the people here. There are cases where I am unsure, definitely. In those cases, I switch to proper blind testing and can be certain to within some confidence interval. There are also cases where I am certain, and I have not been wrong about those assessments in years.

Bias is not a fact of life if you're the sort of person who cares enough about getting accurate results to train yourself to be resistant to it. Again, bias effects are a mental condition that can be treated to some degree, at least in my own experience. Easy solution: err on the side of caution. Of course, then you trade false positives for missed true positives, but claiming that it cannot be treated is a fallacy. Now admittedly, blind testing will only give you an arbitrarily low probability that you are guessing, but that's simply the mathematical reality of the situation.

It's not a matter of toeing (not tow, BTW) the party line, it's a matter of the fact that your underlying assumptions about the way audio works are wrong. However, you deftly avoid making any claims that would allow us to take action against those assumptions, and instead insist on spreading the nonsense implications of that faulty worldview. Your loss, not ours...

Quote from: ShowsOn on 2009-09-20 13:12:59

Quote from: analog scott on 2009-09-20 12:54:03

There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.

But the test has determined whether or not there is a real difference, or if the difference is bias! If the only difference is bias, then the test has proved that there actually is no difference. If a person continues to feel that there is a difference, then they are literally just deluding themselves.

How do you prove that there is no audible advantage in crazy audiophile gadgets? How do you disprove God?

Life as a sceptic can seem gray compared to the fantastic world of true believers.

-k

It is only logical that if one makes a change in their system that offers no "audible " difference but does offer a "percptual" advantage that one has actually improved the percieved performance of their system and at no cost to the "actual" performance of that system.

Thing is, when you're taking an objectivist perspective and looking for differences, as soon as you think you hear a difference, you can easily verify to arbitrary accuracy using blind-testing.

Subjectivists have no such procedure. They assume that as soon as they hear a difference, that's the end of the process.

Since 2002, I've repeatedly first heard a difference (in lossy audio compression, usually by hearing an artifact), then verified that perception, then remedied that perception on countless occasions. My internal bias mitigation was intended to allow me to identify problem samples without the need for a blind testing environment. That being said, I don't know that it's not bias until I blind test, which I always do. I've run into many different samples where I've slightly tweaked my collection to be properly transparent. Out of the last, say, 20 problem samples, not a single one has been a false positive. There were some in the first year or two.

The cost is that there may be samples that I could differentiate that are slipping by me, but as I don't hear them anyhow, who cares?

You can mock me all you like for this. The fact is that it works great for me.

The bottom-line is this: Use objective feedback techniques to teach yourself about your own biases. Learn the thresholds at which differences are personally perceptible to you. Verify every supposed difference. Err on the side of caution.

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It is only logical that if one makes a change in their system that offers no "audible " difference but does offer a "percptual" advantage that one has actually improved the percieved performance of their system and at no cost to the "actual" performance of that system.

the only way to know for sure if the difference is only perceptible, thus proving your statement true, is by performing a controlled test to prove there is no audible difference. however, once you prove there is no audible difference, you then have no reason to perceive a difference.

Sure you do. Bias effects is a reason. there are other possible reasons.Thngs related to state of mind and body.